A recent business review of CNN has employees worried that widespread job cuts are coming following the formation of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, CNBC reports.
The review, led by CEO Chris Licht, comes as part of a broader effort by Warner Bros. Discovery head David Zaslav to find new ways of saving money at the company, which has roughly 40,000 workers, with about 4,500 working at CNN.
Sources told CNBC that they expect the company to lay off more than 1,000 people by the end of the year, and parts of CNN that are considered unnecessary may get cut from the budget.
Under Licht's leadership, CNN shrank its audio team that produced several podcasts featuring the network's on-air personalities, closed down its NFT marketplace, and shuttered its premium service CNN+ about a month after its launch.
"When [Zaslav] called and offered me the job, he told me what he was looking for out of CNN," Licht said earlier this month in an interview with CNBC. "And I said, 'That's exactly the kind of network I would like to see.' There's no daylight between his vision for this network and my vision for this network. The only reason why I took this job is because it was him in charge. I thought, 'I can deliver this for him.' "
Sources told CNBC that Licht is looking for CNN to provide coverage that more resembles a newspaper than an online news outlet like Politico, with less of a focus on the minutia of politics and more on stories with broad appeal on subjects like business, sports, and technology.